Майкл Ридпат - The Marketmaker

The Dekker machine continued to operate as if nothing had happened, bringing bond issues to market, spreading rumours, buying, selling. I watched Jamie work: it was all beginning to make more sense to me now. But we were both subdued. We didn’t mention the favela deal, money-laundering or where he and Luciana had got to at the party the previous day.

But our activities in Brazil were not only marked by Bocci’s newspapers. A small article in IFR caused a ripple round the dealing room when it was first noticed. It was in the gossip column, where the following week’s events often first appeared as unsubstantiated rumour.

An English banker working for London-based Dekker Ward was in Brazil last week. Nicholas Elliot was walking on Ipanema beach in Rio de Janeiro late at night when he was attacked by a gang and stabbed in the chest. Elliot is understood to have recovered well from his ordeal.

Not so his colleague, American citizen Martin Beldecos, who was murdered in his hotel room in Caracas last month, ostensibly by thieves. Two such attacks so close together demonstrate the increasing dangers facing bankers travelling to South America. However, there may be a more sinister explanation. Sources inside Dekker Ward say that Martin Beldecos was working on verifying the origin of funds received by Dekker Trust, Dekker Ward’s Cayman Islands affiliate. There are rumours in Caracas that Beldecos’s murder was not the result of a random burglary gone wrong, but a contract killing. A spokesman for Dekker Ward denied this, and spoke of the shock felt by the whole firm over the tragedy, and their sympathy for Martin Beldecos’s family.

Jamie scanned the article and threw me an anxious glance. ‘That wasn’t you who talked to them, was it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But it’s interesting, don’t you think?’

‘It’s just gossip. The real trouble will come when Eduardo finds out who has been talking to IFR. Watch out, here he comes.’

Eduardo was walking across the square to Ricardo’s desk, clasping his yellow copy of IFR. They conferred for a few minutes, and then Eduardo broke away.

‘Shit! He’s coming this way,’ whispered Jamie.

He was indeed, a large dark presence, brows knitted in anger.

‘Follow me,’ he growled at me, barely pausing to slow down as he passed Jamie’s desk.

I did as he asked, into the opaque corner office.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

I sat.

He strode round his desk and sat facing me, his large shoulders hunched over the plain white pad of paper in front of him.

‘Well?’

Initially cowed by his presence, I now began to feel angry myself. I had done nothing wrong. I wasn’t a schoolboy. I shouldn’t be intimidated like this.

‘Well, what?’ I replied, looking him in the eye.

‘Did you talk to IFR ?’

‘No.’ I kept my voice calm.

Eduardo leaned back in his chair and fixed his eyes on mine. They were large, dark and angry, but like Ricardo’s they seemed to bore straight into me, threatening me to tell the truth, daring me to lie.

‘No one is allowed to talk to the press at Dekker Ward without permission,’ Eduardo said. ‘And to spread this kind of rumour is a betrayal to everyone who works here. Dekker Ward has worked hard to keep a spotless reputation in Latin America. This kind of rumour can do us untold harm. Do you understand?’

‘I understand very well,’ I said. ‘As I said, I haven’t spoken to any journalists. I don’t even know any financial journalists.’ The anger rose in my chest, and seemed actually to cause my wound to throb. ‘A week ago I was stabbed in the chest while I was on business for Dekker Ward. I deserve your trust. In fact, I expect your trust.’

Eduardo watched me with his thick lips pursed. ‘I hope you’re telling the truth,’ he said, ‘because if you’re not—’

I’d had enough. ‘Of course I am!’ I said. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me.’ I stood up and left the room, feeling Eduardo’s glowering eyes on my back.

Jamie was right. There was no way I was going to tell Eduardo about Martin Beldecos’s fax.

During the morning, a number of other people were called into Eduardo’s office, including Jamie. The atmosphere in the office changed noticeably. I was not the only one who was angry.

Just before lunch, Ricardo emerged from Eduardo’s office and perched himself on Jamie’s desk.

‘Nick, I suspect Eduardo was a little rough on you this morning,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘He was. And without cause. He has no reason to think that I talked to the press. And it was me who was stabbed.’

‘I know. And I’m sorry. I appreciate that. I trust you and Eduardo trusts you too. It’s just it doesn’t look good for the firm to be linked to a drug-gang murder, and I think my brother was a little angry about it. Don’t worry, you’re doing a good job and we know that. Let’s just forget it, shall we?’

He patted me on the shoulder, and walked over towards Dave and Miguel, who both looked like they had had a hard time too.

I glanced at Jamie. ‘Eduardo does this every now and then,’ he said. ‘Loses his rag and throws his weight around. Then Ricardo has to calm things down. At least this time it looks like no one got hurt.’

I was still angry. But soon something happened which took my mind off money-laundering, Martin Beldecos’s murder, and Eduardo. The Brady battle.

The battle started at seven fifteen on Wednesday morning. We started it. Or rather Ricardo did.

The battlefield was my Argentine Discount bond issue.

These bonds had been born out of Argentina’s Brady plan, named after the US Treasury Secretary, Nicholas Brady, who had sponsored the original idea. During the early 1990s, the banks who had lent billions to Latin America agreed to swap their defaulted loans for bonds, which could then be traded. These became known as Brady bonds. In the next few years most of the major Latin American countries had undergone a Brady plan, leaving over a hundred billion dollars of Brady bonds outstanding. Needless to say, Dekker had a lot of fun trading them. The Argentine Discounts, or ‘Argy discos’ as they were known, were one of the three classes of bonds created out of the Argentine Brady plan in 1992.

After the usual round of comments from everyone, Ricardo told us his idea. ‘As you guys all know, Argentina has been cheap for a while, and it’s getting cheaper. There’s no good reason for it. Cavallo’s peso plan is working and their banking crisis is under control. We’re not going to see another Mexico meltdown down there.’ He was referring to the crisis that had hit Mexico after the disastrous devaluation of its currency in December 1994.

‘The discos are cheap. We know that the Shiloh Fund has been offloading a ton of them into the market. So that’s where we’ll move. Pedro and I have picked up two hundred million so far, but that’s just a start.’

I caught my breath. Two hundred million! Ricardo hadn’t been exaggerating when he had told me he had bought a lot of bonds. I couldn’t help feeling a little proud. Of all the bonds in all the world, Ricardo had picked mine to do a number on. I listened in anticipation.

‘Now, the Discounts are the smallest of the three Argentine issues with just over four billion dollars outstanding. That’s still quite a lot of bonds, but we think that up to three billion is locked away by people who won’t sell at these prices, mostly because they’d have to book a loss. So if we pick up four or five hundred million we should really move the market. Get these bonds trading where they should be.’

There was a chuckle from the assembled group. ‘I like it,’ said Dave.